Just say yes
Terry had just settled himself on the toilet when the door opened and
Brendan stepped into the ensuite bathroom.
“Oh hey Terry. What’s up?”
“What does it look like?” Terry said in a tone of mild annoyance as he held
in the turd he’d been just on the verge of letting loose.
Brendan laughed. “Hey are you going to that cookout later tonight over at
the SAE house?”
“I dunno man, I’ve got a paper due Friday.”
“Aw come on, this early? What class is it?”
“Comp.”
“That’s some bullshit.”
“Yeah. Hey bro, do you always do this?”
“Do what?” asked Brendan confused but smiling.
“Walk in on a guy while he’s trying to take a dump.”
Brendan laughed again and leaned back on the vanity directly in front of
Terry. “I don’t go out of my way to. You done by the way? I’ve gotta piss.”
“I’m not.”
“Well hurry up then dude.”
Terry, resigned to the fact that Brendan wasn’t going to leave, relaxed his
asshole and started to release a big slow moving turd. It crackled out as
Brendan said, “You’ve got plenty of time to work on it before Friday. It
can’t be that big of a deal when it’s only like, the second week of the
semester.”
“Probably not,” Terry sighed, pinching the loaf which plopped into the
toilet. “I wanna get off to a good start though.”
“I hear you. But it’s rush week. You’ve gotta get your priorities
straight.”
“Are you trying to pledge SAE?” Terry said, letting out an involuntary fart
as he pushed out his second log which came out faster than the first.
“Not really. Free hot dogs and burgers though. And there are bound to be
some KD girls there…” he said, grinning.
“True,” said Terry, looking at Brendan impassively as he pushed out the
dregs of his load. Brendan’s keeping him company in the bathroom was a
first, but it wasn’t a surprise. He’d known Brendan for a few weeks now,
since they’d been assigned as roommates with two other guys from the soccer
team as their suite mates, and he was definitely uninhibited, sometimes a
little weird. But Terry liked him, in spite of how annoyed he’d been at
first at Brendan’s disregard of boundaries. Terry picked up on a vibe that
a few of the other guys on the team also felt unsure about how to take him,
but Brendan still got along with everyone, and not only for his outgoing,
positive attitude. He was the sort of guy who had your back.
Terry realized this a week ago, after he’d drunk a few too many shots of
tequila and started ralphing in the front garden of one of the houses on
Greek Row. He could recall hazily the horrible shame he’d felt as someone
yelled at him drunkenly from the porch, as well as an unexpected presence
by his side and a hand on his shoulder. It took a few seconds to dawn on
him that this hand belonged to Brendan, who must’ve noticed he wasn’t doing
well and followed him outside. So that had been Brendan’s voice telling
him, “It’s okay, there you go, get it out.” And that voice was now
defending him against the angry one on the porch. Terry’s mind was a sieve
at the time, and everything surrounding the incident remained a blur,
except for the moment when he’d glanced over in the midst of his sweaty
misery and seen Brendan’s face, smiling gently in commiseration. He caught
onto that image; that was the moment he knew he’d made a friend.
It was one thing for your friend to see you puking your guts out as he
helps you get through a bad night. It’s another thing to take a dump in
full view of him, and stone cold sober at that. This was a first. Terry
wasn’t sure how he felt about it. But Brendan wasn’t batting an eye, and
they were both guys. Even though Terry himself wasn’t one to let loose, it
was pretty much the norm for guys on the team in high school and college to
burp and fart around each other. This was just an extension of that. At
worst it was a little awkward to be on display doing something that Terry
up to this point had always had privacy for. And if it seemed more private
than what Brendan had already witnessed last week, it was at least more
dignified.
By this reasoning Terry brushed aside what was left of his embarrassment
and began to wipe.
“Come on, be my wingman,” said Brendan.
“You make it hard for a guy to say no, you know?”
“I’m just trying to get you to do what you already want to do and is, like,
objectively the best option anyway. Oh man – what have you been eating
dude?” he said as he made a comical grossed out face.
“The exact same shit you’ve been eating. And if you don’t wanna smell it
you could leave the room.” Terry pulled out some more paper after checking
the smearing on the used wad.
“May wanna hop in the shower after that one bud,” Brendan offered with a
barely suppressed a grin of mischief.
Terry just shook his head and kept wiping. “Thanks a lot for your attention
and concern bro.”
“Hey if you’re gonna be my wingman you can’t have poopy pants.”
Terry then on an impulse made as if to throw the freshly used wipe at
Brendan, who immediately leapt back and cowered by the far corner of the
vanity in a fit of hysterics. “You WOULD NOT,” he said once he realized
that Terry was faking, but jumped when Terry made another feint.
“Try me,” he said, just as their suitemate Kyle opened the other bathroom
door and absorbed the scene in a quick glance before retreating back into
his room. Realizing Kyle must’ve caught a sight of him pantsless on the
toilet, legs spread wide and dirty TP aloft, Terry felt his balls retract
in embarrassment.
“Whoa-ho!” came Kyle’s voice from behind the door. “Sorry to interrupt!”
“Terry’s terrorizing me!” laughed Brendan. “Like a little monkey -”
“Oh my God Brendan, I’m just trying to take a shit!” said Terry, who was at
this point enough broken by embarrassment to see the comedy of the
situation and on the verge of tearful laughter himself.
“You guys are having way too much fun in there.”
“Yeah, and I’m about to wet my pants,” said Brendan, his body quaking as he
grabbed at his crotch and watched Terry begin wiping again.
“Sorry you had to see that Kyle,” called Terry.
“Yeah me too. You know doors have locks on them for a reason.”
“Come on Terry, just stop hogging the throne and let me piss,” said
Brendan, who walked over to the toilet as soon as Terry made a move to rise
– and he’d barely moved aside when Brendan had his cock out and was
releasing a healthy stream of piss into the still unflushed toilet. Terry
stood there half in astonishment – not at Brendan’s cock which was not
unimpressive (he’d seen it before), but at how Brendan could do something
so brazen while making it seem normal somehow. Terry snatched a last
handful of toilet paper so he could dab the drop of piss hanging from the
end of his dick and dig in for one last standing wipe to make sure he was
clean.
“You’re really something else Brendan,” he said, tossing the paper
alongside Brendan’s torrent.
As Terry pulled up his pants Brendan looked him in the eye. “I know. But
that’s why you like me deep down,” he said with a wink. Brendan had dark
brown hair but his eyes were blue. Terry broke the eye contact and went to
the sink when he saw Kyle had been looking in through the door.
“You guys done being gay?”
“Come on in and join the party, Ky,” said Brendan as his stream died
down. “You coming with me and Terry to the cookout?”
“Maybe. What time? It smells in here.”
Terry heard the toilet flush as he finished up at the sink. He went back to
his and Brendan’s room while the other guys kept on bantering and Kyle took
his turn to piss. He sat at his desk and half listened. He’d never agreed
to go out, but it seems like it had been decided for him. It would probably
take more effort to resist. Terry felt like he was running on auto-pilot
half the time, and was usually a little tired. In the past month he guessed
he’d met more people and socialized more than he’d done in a whole year of
high school. But the sense that everything he did right now was more
significant somehow than what had come before and would lay the groundwork
for the rest of his life kept him at attention and ready to meet any action
as it came. He felt like he was operating under a constant low grade
anxiety. He guessed that guys like Brendan never had that. Brendan seemed
not just comfortable but overly so.
Terry was an only child, but summer camps and athletics had gotten him used
to a lot of different communal living situations. At first, college had
seemed just like camp. Then, when classes started, it had still seemed like
camp but with school tacked on top of that. Terry had to remind himself
that the school stuff was the real reason he was here. Even though by all
appearances Terry seemed like a typical jock, he’d always taken academics
seriously, and this set him apart from the other jocks in high school. He
was driven to succeed in whatever he committed himself to. This quality had
gotten him into a prestigious university on a scholarship. Now that he was
here, he found himself around a lot more people who had the same drive. He
wasn’t exceptional anymore, just average. He was going to have to define
another kind of success, and another identity.
“These will be some of the best years of your life,” his dad said weeks ago
in the parking lot of the dorms, gripping Terry’s shoulder. It was an
awkward moment. From time to time Terry’s future teammates and schoolmates
(still strangers to him) would walk by, uninvolved in any kind of emotional
scene. He could tell that his mom, who’d already hugged him goodbye, was
starting to tear up. His dad was wearing mirrored sunglasses and the only
thing that betrayed any emotion was the strength of the grip and the
embrace he gave him afterward. A part of Terry wanted to draw out the
goodbye, even to spend the rest of the day with his parents, even though
they’d already gone out to eat for lunch and had made two trips to the
department store to pick up stuff for his dorm room. Another part of him
wanted to cut it off immediately, before too many people saw. His dad might
have sensed this and had opened the driver’s side when his mom was hugging
him for the second time. He could feel the wetness of her tears on his
shoulder through the thin fabric of his T shirt. Relieved when the moment
had passed, Terry waved as the car set into motion, and had turned his back
to it before it had left the lot. “That’s my childhood going away,” he
thought, but without much emotion. He returned the greeting of one of his
new teammates he recognized with a casual smile and a nod, and didn’t think
about his parents again at all after that aside from the weekly 10 minute
phone calls he’d promised his mom – and also, briefly, in moments of
solitude like this one.
The activity of preseason and orientation had crowded out everything else
in the world. Brendan was the closest thing to family he had to rely on
now.
“The best years of your life” – Terry had heard people say things like that
so often that the words seemed hollow. People would also say the same thing
about high school. But their repetition had led Terry to trust them enough
to want to say “yes” to anything that came up. So, he said yes to most
invitations, yes to the tequila shots, yes –
“Hey man, I’m gonna take a shower. You are coming right?” Brendan said as
he entered the room.
“Yeah, I’ll come.”
